Green Lantern in Four Panels Bun Toons. YAY!

In brightest day, in blackest night, I have shades for my windows and I sleep all right.

The Green Lantern movie is finally here. After months of tepid build-up, and fairly uninspired previews, the ho-hum summer blockbuster has arrived in theaters to fairly poor reviews and little enthusiasm. Just like Green Lantern deserves!

Oh, the letters I’m going to get for putting down Hal Jordan. Both of his fans are going to be nasty…(NOTE: Infinitesimal movie spoilers in the last panel.)

Oh, Warner Brothers feature film department, can you never make a decent DC movie without Batman in it?

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your BONUS Green Lantern/Warner Brothers movie moment:

If you haven’t seen it, the above video is the best Green Lantern film, SO FAR…

12 responses to “Green Lantern in Four Panels Bun Toons. YAY!”

1) As much as I personally dig Hal, I suspect that John Stewart is “the public’s” GL after being on Justice League for much of the last decade. Kids who have never set foot in a comic shop may know Green Lantern, and they may be confused (or feel slighted) by it being a white guy.

2) If you were going with Hal, I would never have thought to cast Ryan Reynolds. I like Reynolds quite a lot, but there’s nothing about the guy that says “Hal Jordan” to me. I suppose it makes more sense than Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet, though.

3) This ad campaign has been dismal. The first trailer made it look like a big budget Ryan Reynolds comedy; the campaign of the last couple of months has made it look like a big budget MMORPG. And not once have I seen a single trailer play up the fact that it was directed by Martin Campbell, who helmed the two best Bond movies of the last 16 years (GoldenEye and Casino Royale). I was also confused by the fact that none of the trailers for the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean made mention of having Penelope Cruz in the film. In what world is Penelope Cruz not an asset to a film? These trailer-makers baffle me.

Anyway, I’ve been wanting a Green Lantern movie for close to 20 years and no amount of yawning from anyone else is going to deter me from going. In fact, if my stupid Crohn’s-infested guts cooperate, my wife and I are going to see it in about an hour or so.

Wow. I’m going to see a Green Lantern movie with my wife. That just blew the mind of my 1994 self!

Screwed up by it? How could they be screwed up by the Justice League cartoon. It was one of the best interpretations of the characters in any medium. Plus they did a terrific job with John Stewart and bringing in some of the GL mythos.

Wow, Ty, that is some epic trolling of Hal fans there. I’m far from a H,E,A,T, member, but I don’t have the balls for saying all that.

Travis, I gotta agree. The marketing has been horrible. I was pleasantly surprised that a number of worries about the film were founded due to the really piss poor trailer editing. They really did cut that first one to look like a Ryan Reynolds comedy doing Iron Man. (Still the trailer seemed better than the actual Jack Black or Eddie Murphy comedy vehicles Warner almost made.) Even some of the later trailers were pretty bland looking despite tossing in some fan service and epic scenes. (Actual epic senes, in the classical sense, not the internet slang sense I used earlier.) I thought the final film was a bit rushed, as one of maybe a number of flaws, but damn if the trailer didn’t toss a whole lot out there quick. And it is a shame trailer don’t think people care about directors anymore. Hell, even Captain America isn’t saying it’s by the guy that did The Rocketeer!

I will say I had my doubts about Reynolds, but he didn’t really seem all that Van Wilder. He seemed to be Hal pretty good save for some goofiness and jocularity. Though I gotta admit Hal is a bit of a dry character and I didn’t mind adding some.. we.. personality to him.

F.D., I disagree. I think you have to realize that younger kids raised on the Justice Leage toons who aren’t into comics DO know Jon Stewart as Green Lantern. Particularly young black kids who finally saw a black hero in the JLA. (And it was a hundred better than making Cyborg a founding member. -_-) I don’t completely blame them for the recent twitter flame wars at Warners. I do blame them for putting their internet foot in their mouth before taking five seconds to go on Wikipedia and being dumb on their same damn smart phones. Yet Warners did present Jon to a very big and young influential audience.

I’m sure Golden Age fans may have thought the same of these kids reading about this new Green Lantern Hal Jordan replacing their Alan Scott. Or, heaven help us, we older Star Wars fans hope and pray the prequels are a forgettable fad not something entire generations are growing up with.

I did manage to get to see Green Lantern yesterday, shortly after responding to this very discussion. My synopsis is that it’s Maverick from Top Gun recruited by the Men in Black to fight Gozer from Ghostbusters. It’s a rather perfunctory film, never really allowing any particular plot point to be fully explored, or to develop organically. A shame, because I liked quite a lot of the elements of the film. Oa worked much better than I feared from the trailers. Abin Sur, Sinestro, Tomar Re and Kilowog were spot-on. I liked the characterization of Parallax here, but did not care for the actual depiction in the least. It was only one step up from the shoddy treatment Galactus received in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

While they did a solid job making Peter Sarsgaard appear as Hector Hammond, Hammond himself is not a particularly appealing character. He looks more like a guy who ought to be interviews on the local news, sharing his eyewitness account of a twister or sordid activity. The combination of an underwhelming Parallax and a displeasing Hammond really kept me from ever being particularly invested in the conflict.

The narrative of Hal having to prove himself worthy of being a Lantern worked quite well, I thought and though I was resistant to the “overcoming fear” change, I think it suits the film medium better than “fearless Hal.” Let’s face it: you’d have a very dull movie it Hal is fearless because unlike Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker, there really aren’t any demons for him to exorcise and unlike Kal-El, he’s not necessarily out to be a modern day Moses showing us the way. In the comics, Hal can get away with not showing a whole lot of character growth (except, you know, those times he goes crazy and kills everyone and rewrites the timeline). And, as Hal earned his stripes, I felt that Ryan Reynolds acquitted himself nicely as Hal.

Speaking of casting Hal, I kept thinking the whole time that if he was 10-15 years younger, Tim Robbins would have made a perfect Hal Jordan.

My last thought: I got to see a Green Lantern movie yesterday with my wife. That’s two things that would blow my 1994 self’s mind.

No, Guy Gardner is more like a sociopathic cartoon version of a Tea Party Republican voter. Heh. Haven’t read a mainstream superhero comic in years, but the mention of Guy brought up the mental image of that old Justice League issue where Batman cold-cocked him right in the nose. Haven’t seen the movie yet, but despite all the bad reviews, I’m actually looking forward to going anyway. Thankfully since people will go see just about anything during the summer season, the flick actually did respectable box office over the weekend, so it won’t be too embarrassing when I step up to the window and buy a ticket.